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Sunday, July 26, 2015

Doctors attach man’s severed hands to his leg

Chinese surgeons recently performed a bizarre surgery in order to save a man’s severed hand. They grafted it on to his ankle for a month, before reattaching it to his arm.

The innovative surgery, according to Shanghaiist, was carried out on a factory worker, Zhou, in China’s Hunan province. Zhou’s left hand was accidentally severed from his arm

during an accident involving a spinning blade machine. He was immediately rushed to hospital where Dr. Tang Juyu and his team realised that the damaged nerves and tendons needed time to heal. If they tried to attach the hand to his arm immediately, its cells would die from lack of blood supply.

“Under normal temperatures, a severed finger needs to resume blood supply within 10 hours, but that time is even shorter for a separated limb,” Tang explained. “If a limb is short of blood for too long, its tissues die and it will be unsalvageable.”

So the doctors decided to attach the hand to Zhou’s ankle, and the immediate flow of blood kept it alive for a month. During this time his arm healed, and in another 10-hour operation, they re-attached the hand to the arm.

For now, Zhou is only able to move his fingers slightly. But his condition is expected to improve with time, and soon he’ll be able to use his entire hand.